Hi! Blocked: Seems we narrowly missed out on a star-studded Meta trial, featuring testimonies from Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, Reed Hastings, Sheryl Sandberg, and Marc Andreessen, after the company reached a settlement with disgruntled investors yesterday. Today we’re exploring: 

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Canada’s Couche-Tard has finally given up its $46 billion pursuit of 7-Eleven’s parent co.

Circle K owner Couche-Tard has officially scrapped its $46 billion offer to acquire Seven & i Holdings — the Japanese parent of 7-Eleven — in what could have marked Japan’s largest-ever foreign buyout.

The failed bid follows a yearlong pursuit by the Canadian retailer, which holds less than 1% of Asia’s convenience store market, as it sought to build a global powerhouse. In a somewhat salty exit letter, Couche-Tard accused Seven & i of a “calculated campaign of obfuscation and delay.” Seven & i, for its part, said the Canadian company made “numerous mischaracterizations,” and reaffirmed its commitment to a stand-alone strategy, including a leadership change and a planned IPO for its North American business.

Tokyo via Texas

While the 7-Eleven store we know today started life as a humble icehouse in Dallas in 1927, its ascent to become a global juggernaut truly began after Japanese retailer Ito-Yokado licensed the brand in 1974 and later acquired its struggling US parent in the 1990s. The business was consolidated under Seven & i Holdings in 2005, which now operates nearly 22,000 7-Eleven stores in Japan — over a quarter of the chain’s 85,800 global locations and ~1.4x more than in Thailand, the next largest market. Its Japanese store count is also far greater than where the chain got its start.

That local dominance helps explain why executives were reportedly hesitant about foreign ownership of 7-Eleven — where customers swing by not just for snacks, but to pay bills, drop off packages, buy toiletries, and grab full meals. The stores are so deeply embedded in Japanese daily life that the government officially classified Seven & i as “core” to national security last year. 

The collapsed deal also reflects corporate Japan’s still-cautious stance toward foreign takeovers more broadly — despite growing investor pressure to boost shareholder value and the fact that overseas investors now own more of the market than locals.

Shares of Seven & i tumbled over 10% following the withdrawal announcement, trading ~26% below Couche-Tard’s offer price.

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While Pepsi revenue pops, Sprite and Dr Pepper are bubbling up in the soda standings

After posting expectation-beating results on Thursday, snacks and beverage giant PepsiCo saw its stock jump more than 6% — suggesting that, following a slew of disappointing sales results in North America, investors might now think that Pepsi is OK.  

While cost-cutting and a focus on affordable pricing helped the company bring in more than $22 billion in revenue in the second quarter, a bright spot for Pepsi was its soda division, citing the double-digit volume growth of Pepsi Zero Sugar and the acquisition of prebiotic soda brand Poppi.

Soda, so good

Soda consumption was reported to be declining in the mid-2010s, hitting a 30-year low in 2015, per industry tracker Beverage Digest. Now, though, it looks like Americans are falling back in love with the drinks: total soft drink sales are growing again, and Coca-Cola and Keurig Dr Pepper, the world’s biggest soda brands besides Pepsi, have also seen soda case sales rise in the past year.

Even as Pepsi enjoys a revenue rebound, the soaring popularity of other household name beverages is undercutting its market dominance. Last year, ambiguously flavored fan favorite Dr Pepper overtook Pepsi as the second-highest-selling soft drink by case sales, securing an 8.7% market share in the US, Beverage Digest found.

Not only that, Sprite, Coca-Cola’s citrus-flavored soft drink, just pipped Pepsi to third position with an 8.03% share of the market, compared with Pepsi’s 7.97%, putting the drink in fourth place for the first time in the tracker’s history.

It’s the real thing

Still, there’s no match for Coke, which further cemented its place as the most popular soft drink, taking a 19.2% share of the US market.

However, the classic soda might become less classic in the future (or more so, if you consider any time before 1984), after President Trump announced Wednesday that American Coke recipe will switch to using “REAL Cane Sugar.” While Coca-Cola has yet to confirm the news, it’s come as a blow to corn syrup makers.

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Smart Money's New Frontier: Private Credit

As markets hit record highs and Goldman Sachs projects just 3% annual stock returns over the next decade, sophisticated investors are diversifying beyond traditional assets. Enter private credit: a market worth approximately $2T in AUM that's grown almost 10x since 2009.

Through Percent's platform, accredited investors can access institutional-quality deals starting at $500. Their marketplace has facilitated over $1B in transactions, with implied returns after losses at 14.9% in 2024.¹

Join the investors already leveraging private credit for portfolio enhancement. Plus, new investors receive up to $500 on their first investment.²

BlackRock is now a $12.5 trillion asset powerhouse, though investors still weren’t that pleased this week

As the famous saying goes, everyone’s a genius in a bull market.

That, of course, includes your cousin who bought a load of bitcoin a decade ago, as well as the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, which now manages a staggering $12.5 trillion in customer assets as of the second quarter. 

As the market shrugged off tariff-related uncertainty, the still-strong US economy — as well as excitement over the future benefits of AI — helped to push the S&P 500 to record highs, with the index rising some 7% in the latest quarter. With stocks worth more, and the US dollar weakening, the custodian’s asset base swelled, too.

Despite hitting the impressive, round-number milestone, BlackRock shares were down as much as 7% at one point on Tuesday, as weaker-than-expected deposits into its investment products — a lackluster result that the group blamed on a single large institutional client withdrawing $52 billion — weighed on investors’ minds. The stock has since recouped most of those losses. 

Private plans

Though known for its public markets prowess and low-cost ETFs, the world’s largest asset manager has had its eye on expanding into private markets (perhaps because it’s hard to keep asset-gathering when you’re as big as BlackRock).

Of particular interest is the world of private credit, or loans not made by banks to private companies.

Despite previous endeavors from 2018 being labeled a “disaster” by some BlackRock employees, the company is once again diving into the space, buying up specialized platforms and data providers like Preqin and HPS Investment Partners with goals to attract $400 billion in the higher margin world of private capital by 2030.

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A ~$2T market offering higher yield potential and low correlation to stocks — that's probably why institutional investors choose private credit. Through Percent, accredited investors can access these opportunities starting at $500² — get to know private credit here.³

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